March 13, 2011

March 13, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — Jennifer Egan, whose A Visit From the Goon Squad was announced as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction Thursday. will visit DePauw University on April 27. Her reading, sponsored by the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Meharry Hall of historic East College and is free and open to the public. (photo: Vistalux)

Calling it "an inventive book," the Wall Street Journal noted, "Set in the music industry, Goon Squad follows a middle-aged record executive named Bennie Salazar, his kleptomaniac assistant, Sasha, and a dozen or more overlapping characters whose lives are altered by the forces of time and technology. One chapter is written as a celebrity profile; another is rendered as a Powerpoint presentation. The narrative, skipping forward and back, weaving a loose-link chain from strands of backstory, has been likened to the experience of surfing the Web," wrote Steven Kurutz.

The Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg calls Egan's award-winning book "an innovatively structured work ... (whose) title is taken from an Elvis Costello song that is also about time and how decisions echo across generations. It is the first significant critical prize for Egan, who has published three other novels and a collection of stories."

Egan also authored Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, as well as The Keep, Emerald City and Other Stories, and The Invisible Circus, which was made into a feature film with Cameron Diaz. Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, McSweeney’s and other magazines and her non-fiction articles appear frequently in the New York Times Magazine. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.

The James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series was established in 1998 with gifts from Marilou Morrell Kelly, a 1955 graduate of DePauw. Learn more about the Kelly Writers Series by clicking here.